WINEMAKING
Making wine at 51 degrees north was never going to be easy. It is impossible to overestimate the burden of vineyard work and the ongoing level of sacrifice and dedication that is needed to nudge the dial favourably towards balance and flavour.
What makes all the toil and investment worthwhile at Danbury Ridge, is that the salt coast mesoclimate has passed through a significant threshold for ripeness. Dropping crop, leaf removal and de-vigourating practices make sense because they are enhancing rather than remedial or reparative.
Integrating the vines into the environment is one side of a coin. The flipside is revealed in the winery, where a different form of integration and nurturing occurs, between the fruit and winemaking.
Again, the level of investment and devotion required is sobering. Sparkling wines are Coquard-pressed, and the still wines gravity-fed into a mix of small oak open top fermenters and Nomblot concrete tanks.